Chirp!:

Tuesday, July 17, 2007

It's my fault, I know it's not everyone's cup of tea, but I *l'adore* co-sleeping.The Master is so cuddly and snuggly and he loves it as much as I do.

But he has his own room, and his own big-boy bed, and look, he does sleep there .. but since winter has hit ( and those winds were ferocious last night, and then a possum ran across the roof right over his bedroom, and it even scared AB, so we let him come into our room. )It seems at the moment he's in our bed 3 nights out of four.

And it's sooo much fun in our bed, and the kid knows it.

Our routine:

All hop into bedAll with books. We read, we chat.

Some tickles, some tricks ( like when we hid Moo under the blankies the other week, and sent Daddy down to the loungeroom to hunt for him for ages, while we laughed like loons and giggled and conspired under the sheets at our little prank.. Fun )

Nothing like that goin' on in the smaller bedroom.It's all sleep business there. Not fun.

Sooooooo, last night, we had to make a pact to make the parent's bedroom less funpark and more business of sleep. This probably means I will never read/finish another book ever again !

Perfunctual: we go to bed, the lights go off. We sleep.

It was my first night last night, so hopefully I can be forgiven for the slumber-party whispers and giggles after the lights went out.Cold turkey is so hard.

Here's a diagram of us all in bed:

Daddy gets his side all to himself ( if he read my blog, he'd deny this, but it's true .. except on the occasions the boy sleeps sideways with his feet on Daddy's face )

But mainly I half-hang off the bed, the boy spoons me, and the cat ( yes, that thing at the bottom of the bed is a cat ) spends the night trying to get as close to my face as possible, and after many rebuttals finds space near my tummy/legs.

This makes any changing of sleep position in the night quite the obstacle course - removing an arm here, a small leg there, using my hyper-flexibility ( thanks genepool ! ) to 'Harry Houdini' around the cat, and settling in again.Repeat several times throughout the night.

Strangely, none of this bothers me .. which makes it an even harder habit to break.

We love to co-sleep when Holly actually sleeps, but most of the time when there's 3 in the bed, no-one gets any sleep at all! We do have lots of play time in the big bed on week-end mornings though, I'll have to try the one about hiding something under the blanky and sending Daddy out to hunt for it! Good one!

Weekend cuddles for our kids when little.Now it is co sleep with 2 nice warm dogs bodies! lol.They are half poodle, so they are not shedders, though Leo seems to a little in Summer!And they were most welcome last night!!

My 13 year old son will still turn up in my bed form time to time. I broke the main habit of sleeping with us (on my side) when he was nearly 10! He eventually got came to have too many elbows and knees.

Once, aged three, he wet our bed, but managed to get my Pete really covered while remaining quite dry himself. On waking in the morning he frowned and said, "DAD! You've wet the bed. That is disgusting."

Every morning about 7.00am we end up with two adults, two children and between 5-10 stuffed toys in our bed.Its bedlam (pardon the pun), but really a lot of fun as well.Not so good on these cold mornings with squirmy cold toes!!

Oh how this post made me laugh. Monet went through (what seemed like months and months) of waking up during the night in her room and not being able to fall back to sleep, so I'd pop her in bed with us. And Lyndon would NEVER move over so it was Monnie and I on one side and him on the other.

It used to annoy me but I did love watching her sleep.

But when we moved here in March and we got a new bed I made it a rule that she was not to sleep inour bed. And she doesn't. A handful of times I have collected her when she'd wake and pop her i with us which I do love.

I especially love it when it is just her and I in bed. I guess this is part of the reason why I'm looking forward to our impending Victoria visit when we share the bed at my parents. And why I look forward to our regular nights away as the 3 of us share a bed and lots of laughs.

We sort of co-slept with Chickie when he was a baby but he was really too squirmy to do it once he got older. His cot was able to be converted into a toddler bed, so we took one side off and attached it to our bed, so he had his own space but he was next to me. Once he was more mobile I got tired of being kicked.

When he comes into our bed now, it's way too uncomfortable. I'm in a similar position as you - including the cat at the feet!

I think you should do whatever works for you. We co-slept for at least part of the night up until very recently. And on scary nights, we still do. I love it, and I shall miss it when they no longer want to be seen with me ;-)

Oscar used to always come into our bed. It caused the term "heels of death" to be created.Felix never did, he'd just scream for us to come and comfort him in his bed (in which your diagram is the exact replica of the sleeping position).I love Jasper sleeping in our bed.And Grover is the best at it.

I see no reason why you should change, if you are happy. Our littlest has recently got in to the habit of coming into our bed, which is fine unless the other two decide to join in, then it is mayhem, and no sleep for anyone. They all want to be next to me, and none of them want to be touching each other. I am bothered by sleeping half off the bed actually, perhaps you are half cat yourself?I thought your cat was a dog.

I knew it was a cat. At once. Our cat is a heat seeking floozy and tries to sleep on top of my legs.

I'd love for Grace to sleep with us ocasionally(or at least come in for a cuddle in the morning) but she is little miss independence these days... Pity, it sounds like so much fun. I love waking up in a tangle.

We (meaning me and MY pillow) end up with at least one out of two children in bed after midnight. Plus the dog sleeps on MY feet, while the husband has half a bed, and still whinges. It is so toasty and warm though. And they won't be doing it when they're 18 (will they??!)